The government is made up from persons in the "public." If the public cannot be trusted to act in the public good, the government cannot be trusted to do so either either.
It sounds like your argument is towards some sort of authoritarianism / monarchy which removes power from the public so that someone can force them to act for the public good. I do admit you have a point that authoritarianism/monarchy has its advantages, and one is the ability to put a tighter control on populace undergoing a pandemic (short-sighted thinking is a fundamental weakness of democracies electing leaders for only a few years at a time).
that's a false equivalency.
An action on the part of the gov't does not equate to the "average" action of the general population. The very fact that there must be gov't mandated laws against stealing is evidence of this - otherwise, people would steal and loot!
Plenty of people opposed to the draft in war, and yet it must be done in the public good. The only saving grace, because of western democracy, is that any gov't who continue to flounder the power granted to them, would (ostensibly) get voted out. This doesn't happen in an authoritarian gov't - like china for example.
But people who claim mistrust of the public institutions are destroying that mechanism - leading to the very last US election, where some people are de-legitimizing the outcome because they believe that some "authoritarian" entity is forcing it upon them.
I dont know whether these people are stupid, or brainwashed by something.
People like stories that they can grasp in general, and populism as a political tactic provides an extremely simple narrative of a clear-cut "elite" group onto which almost any grievance can be projected as being caused by - and that makes it easy for people to paint themselves as heroic figures fighting evil and thus allow them to justify whatever means they use to get there.
And the effects of deprivation on people's health, cognition, mental health and relationships make it harder for people who are struggling to avoid embracing simple narratives that fit their biases. People who have everything and have never struggled a day in their life do the same after all, people are people at the end of the day.
Populism is the enemy of liberal democracy - and institutions in general - but the problem is that as a tactic it's easy and effective as a way of whipping people up as long as you don't care about and aren't affected by what happens after the angry mob is unleashed. Or if you're the rare true believer instead of being another cynical rabble-rouser.
Most people would probably say populism (political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group against "the elite" [wiki quote]) is pretty rational given the human condition of the modern US and the influences of our elite.
It doesn't, but in a truly democratic country it would.
>that's a false equivalency.
In a democracy the government is all drawn from public. The government of democracies is all members of public (save some essentially powerless queen/royalty as in UK). So no, it's not.
>The very fact that there must be gov't mandated laws against stealing is evidence of this - otherwise, people would steal and loot!
People do steal and loot under virtually every democratic government. Laws are mostly to tell you what happens if you do it, not to set up surveillance to invade you privacy to check that you don't (although I must admit this has been more common lately).
>Plenty of people opposed to the draft in war, and yet it must be done in the public good
Your words not mine. I vehemently disagree "it must be done." Our last draft was disregarded in a widespread fashion, and ultimately the dodgers were essentially pardoned because the government had to yield to the "average" action of the general populace.
>But people who claim mistrust of the public institutions are destroying that mechanism
The loss of trust in public institution are in large part a result in the fact they have destroyed the mechanism of their legitimacy, the constitution. We now live in a society where 4th amendment is void (drug dog can "alert" on your car/person and you can be searched at any time, and even patted down without even that). A policeman can shoot a woman in the middle of the night on a bogus warrant, and the only guy looking at prosecution will be the guy who missed (see: Breonna Taylor). I can be tossed in jail for 5-10 years if I decide to remove a brace from a pistol and put a stock on it instead (2nd amendment is dead). Same 5+ years if you own a pot leaf and a gun at the same time and did nothing else "wrong" (see: conviction of RussianFPS, although he did not get this much jail time).
Posse Comitatus Act is essentially dead as now our police force is essentially another military branch armed by relinquished items from the military and sees itself as a military like force for controlling the populace, complete with armored vehicles, machine guns, explosives, urban warfare type training, and virtual invulnerability from prosecution for killing the populace and special privileges the common citizen doesn't have like qualified immunity and the ability to own different weapons than civilians even when off duty.
Either the public institutions as they stand are powerless to stop the erosion of liberty and rights, or they are the ones perpetuating the erosion. Either way they are illegitimate.
for something like a pandemic, the public cannot be trusted to make a personal sacrifice for the public good.
As long as such surveillance is limited to such medical emergencies, and rescinded afterwards, it is acceptable. Of course, this requires that the citizens be vigilant, but the current protesting, and fear-mongering and misinformation is beyond just being vigilant, but is instead defying health orders and delaying the end of the pandemic. If that's not stupid, i dont know what is.